Femto cells—building-based wireless access points interfaced with a wired broadband network—are generally deployed to improve indoor wireless coverage and to offload a mobility radio access network (RAN) operated by a wireless network and service provider. Femto cells typically operate in licensed portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and generally offer plug-and-play installation; e.g., automatic configuration of femto AP subsequent to femto cell subscriber registration with a service provider. Improved indoor coverage includes stronger signal and improved reception (e.g., voice or data), ease of session or call initiation, and session or call retention as well. Offloading a RAN reduces operational and transport costs for a service provider since a lesser number of end users utilizes over-the-air (OTA) radio resources (e.g., radio frequency bands and channels), which are typically limited.
Coverage of a femto cell, or femto access point (AP), is generally intended to be confined within the bounds of an indoor compound (e.g., a residential or commercial building) in order to mitigate interference among mobile stations covered by a macro cell and terminals covered by the femto AP. Additionally, confined coverage can reduce cross-talk among terminals serviced by disparate, neighboring femto cells as well. Coverage improvements via femto cells can also mitigate customer attrition as long as a favorable subscriber perception regarding voice coverage and other data services with substantive delay sensitivity, or otherwise, is attained. In addition, a richer variety of wireless voice and data services can be offered to customers via a femto cell since such service offerings do not rely primarily on mobility RAN resources.
Subscriber location information is valuable intelligence, or information, that facilitates delivery of various location-specific services and marketing, which can include advertisement campaigns related to femto cell service. As an example, information services, e.g., subscriber-driven search, may be automatically tuned to suit the subscriber by sorting search results according to distance of entities in the search results from known location of the subscriber that conducted the search. As another example, advertisements and other marketing elements also may be pushed towards mobile device(s) display when a subscriber associated therewith is known to be near a business associated with the advertisement or marketing elements. Conventional mechanism(s) to track subscriber location typically have accuracy drawbacks, battery life inefficiencies, or require dedicated hardware that results in increases cost of mobile devices.